ambiguous icons in toolbar CANCEL vs DELETE

[frizzle21]

Binary package hint: evolution

the icon for Cancel current operation promotes itself stronly through it's bright red color and the obviously delete-ish "X" on it, while the "trash this message" icon is unfittingly hidden behind its transparency and among other icons..

it took me (10 years linux user) over 2 minutes to figure out, that the red X was not the delete button.
I was actually about to report a bug, that i can delete conversations via context menu->delete, but that the red X button doesn't work.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately, we cannot start working on this bug yet because it does not contain enough information. Please describe the following:

- The Ubuntu release that this bug applies to;
- The version of Evolution you are using;
- The flavor of Ubuntu you are using (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Netbook, etc.).

Also, if you could attach a screenshot that shows this problem it would be great. Thanks in advance!

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

Hi Mathieu,

It's the delete button.
I want to delete e.g. Spammail manually.. or advertisement that i don't want to mark spam.
Or all my facebook notifications at once.

The button i intuitively select is the one at the end of the toolbar with the fat red x on it.
I have that button in Maverick and in Natty.

i attached a screenshot of it in Maverick.

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

another reason for this problem is that the icon is always red. it is
always sensitive, even when there is no "current mail operation" to
cancel.

this is something to be discussed in design, i guess..

On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 21:40 +0000, frederik.nnaji wrote:
> Hi Mathieu,
>
> It's the delete button.
> I want to delete e.g. Spammail manually.. or advertisement that i don't want to mark spam.
> Or all my facebook notifications at once.
>
> The button i intuitively select is the one at the end of the toolbar with the fat red x on it.
> I have that button in Maverick and in Natty.
>
> i attached a screenshot of it in Maverick.
>
> ** Attachment added: "Delete-evolution.png"
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/693903/+attachment/1774908/+files/Delete-evolution.png
>

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

frederik,

Could you please open a separate bug about the cancel button remaining sensitive?

Also, I think we'd benefit from discussing this issue, at least as far as the order of buttons go, upstream. Please open a bug on the Gnome tracker about this, you can get all the information on how to do so here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status.

Finally, whether the red octogon with a white X is intuitive enough as a marker for a "Cancel" operation is pretty cultural and subjective. There is currently enough historical usage of it (IE4, IE5, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, etc. to only name a few) to support it's current use to mean "stop" rather than delete. However, you might also want to discuss this issue upstream.

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

i think there are many examples of how an interface can be designed to be consistent with its DE.
Evolution stands out, in that its frontend obviously has no aim to be consistent with the remaining DE, and i'm not talking about any persons responsible for that, it is just the way the whole project appears to be in its nature, from my point of view that is.

I have decided to invest my time into developing modern concepts, instead of fixing this old imo brokon one.

If you have any questions or you believe i can still help, since there are devs who wouldn't mind some design ideas, i'm available, but i won't lead an initiative into nowhere.

[Sam Brightman (sambrightman)]

I think the little red X icons in the corners of every window (whence the window is "deleted") are a pretty big clue that this shouldn't be used. In Firefox, there is no "delete" concept for a web page, so they are able to use it without concern for alternative meanings.

Whilst the trash bin is an improvement for experienced users (at least you can figure it out), its lack of prominence is still an issue. Also, now the trash bin and the trash itself are both used, and right next to each other. Confusing for newer users. Delete is probably used in the order of hundreds of times more than cancel, so should easily get priority if there is "competition" for a visual cue. In fact, I have probably never used cancel in my life in a mail client. I would have to think about it to figure out why it's even there at all.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Sam,

Cancel is quite important for users where some operations may take quite a while to be processed, such as in Exchange accounts.

Regardless, I've set this bug to Incomplete precisely so that people who feel the issue is important can open the bug on the upstream tracker (in GNOME bugzilla, see the link in comment #4), and engage directly with the makers of Evolution to work on the problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for evolution (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]